The Metasploit Framework is a development platform for creating security tools and exploits. The framework is used by network security professionals to perform penetration tests, system administrators to verify patch installations, product vendors to perform regression testing, and security researchers world-wide. The framework is written in the Ruby programming language and includes components written in C and assembler.

The framework consists of tools, libraries, modules, and user interfaces. The basic function of the framework is a module launcher, allowing the user to configure an exploit module and launch it at a target system. If the exploit succeeds, the payload is executed on the target and the user is provided with a shell to interact with the payload.

This is a tool that I pentest my lan with and can be used to hack remote computers/networks or whatever, I will show you how to get this setup and installed in Ubuntu Hardy very easily:First lets install the Dependencies:sudo apt-get install build-essential ruby libruby rdoc libyaml-ruby libzlib-ruby libopenssl-ruby libdl-ruby libreadline-ruby libiconv-ruby rubygems sqlite3 libsqlite3-ruby libsqlite3-dev irb subversion

Now at last we can grab metasploit:svn co http://metasploit.com/svn/framework3/trunk/ metasploitLets load cd to the metasploit dir, and update it, I do this before executing every time.cd metasploitUpdate Metasploit exploits/modules/payloads/packagesvn upLets Startup Metasploit./msfconsole